


To Spill His Flowers on the Ground

by Luzula



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Botanically Accurate, Ent Smut, Grief/Mourning, Hermaphrodites, Other, Protandry, Sex Pollen, Slow Extinction, Social Gender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 00:50:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14201379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: He could not help wishing for another of his kind to share this with him, to brush and twine  their branches with his, to know his pollen was bringing them pleasure. But it was not worth it, not like this.





	To Spill His Flowers on the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I got far too invested in understanding [ent reproductive biology](https://luzula.dreamwidth.org/290353.html), this is the result. Thanks to Vulgarweed for the beta, and check out her [far happier ent smut](https://archiveofourown.org/works/74646).

The west wind blew over the fens and fields of Rohan, and the grasses bowed down before it, league after league. At dawn it came to a hill, and on the hill was an oak tree, standing tall and spreading its branches wide. It swayed in the wind but did not bow down. 

Oaks do not generally grow on the plains of Rohan, and this one was far from his home in the deep woods of Fangorn. He had walked away when he felt spring come and the buds swell on his branches, because he could not bear to be near others of his kind. 

As the sun rose, the first of his blossoms burst open. He shivered and murmured praise to the sun and the spring, barely louder than the sound of the wind through his branches. Night fell, and he drank the dew to quench his thirst. 

On the second morning, blossoms hung on every branch, and slowly, slowly, his stamens ripened, to spread their pollen to the wind. So deeply did he feel it that he dug his roots deep into the ground, his sounds now wordless even to the ear of another Ent. The wind carried his pollen far away, but not to Fangorn. It would fly only over the wide plains. 

He could not help wishing for another of his kind to share this with him, to brush and twine their branches with his, to know his pollen was bringing them pleasure. But it was not worth it, not like this. His thoughts shied away from it, and he thought only of his own bittersweet bliss. 

Night fell again, and another day, and another night. 

As a new day dawned, his pollen had begun to run dry. But still he stood, and his female flowers budded and burst open. A shudder ran through him, of need and pleasure both, and his branches swayed in the wind. But no pollen except his own was there to settle on his stigma, and that would give him no acorns, only barren flowers that dropped to the ground. He longed to be swathed in another's pollen, and feel it growing deep into the ovaries of his blossoms. 

He stood that day and night in the sweet unfulfilled ache of his flowering. One by one, his flowers began to fall. All through the next day and night, he said the long name of Yavanna in praise and sorrow. 

In other years, he had not spent this time alone. He had shared his pleasure with other Ents, as Yavanna had meant them to do, and they had fertilized each other and borne fruit. His acorns had dropped to the ground in the fall, and taken root in the spring and brought forth tiny seedlings with tender green heart-leaves. Some had not survived, but some had, and they grew to slender saplings that stretched up toward the canopy above. 

But however he spoke to them they would never think, or move, or answer his calls. They were trees, and might in time come alive a little, as huorns did. But they would never be of his kind. 

He gave a long, low call of grief that rolled far over the plains. Why had they gone, the Entwives? Why could they not have worked out their differences, instead of losing each other over the long years and distances, until he no longer knew where they dwelled or even if they still lived? If he had known then what he knew now, he would gladly have forsaken his wilderness for some part of the year, and lived instead among their tamed fields and orchards. But it was too late for that now. 

If the Entwives had been here, they would have cupped his seedling in their nurturing hands, and coaxed it into awareness. They would have--but he did not know what they did, to turn a seedling into an Ent. The Ents had tried, many times, to care for their seedlings, hoping they would come alive. It availed them nothing. Perhaps it was not something the Entwives did, but something that they were. 

So now he stood alone on the plain, spilling his flowers on the ground. He did not want to see his acorns grow up dumb. 

The west wind blew still over Rohan and the lands beyond, and carried no tales of Entwives or Entings, and none knew whether it ever would.


End file.
